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Obama vows to keep fighting for undocumented immigrants

by Rebecca Shabad - 06/06/15 6:00 AM ET

President Obama vowed Saturday to keep fighting for undocumented immigrants despite actions by Republicans and some judges to derail his executive orders.

“I’m going to keep doing everything I can to make our immigration system more just and more fair,” Obama said in his weekly address Saturday, marking Immigrant Heritage Month.

Obama said he took action last November to provide more resources for border security and to modernize the legal immigration system to bring illegal immigrants “out of the shadows.”

{mosads}“Some folks are still fighting against these actions,” he said. “I’m going to keep fighting for them. Because the law is on our side. It’s the right thing to do. And it will make America stronger.”

Obama ridiculed House Republican leaders for refusing to allow a vote on a Senate-passed immigration bill from 2013.

“For nearly two years, Republican leaders in the House have refused to even allow a vote on it,” he said.

The president invited the members of the public to share their or their families’ stories of immigration on the White House website. Obama recounted how his mother’s side of the family was originally from England, Ireland and other countries.

“Of course, we can’t just celebrate this heritage, we have to defend it – by fixing our broken immigration system,” he said.

Late last month, a federal appeals court panel refused to lift a Texas judge’s injunction that prevents Obama’s immigration plan from being implemented. Obama’s orders would defer deportations for as many as five million people who are in the United States illegally.

The Justice Department said it plans to appeal the decision in early July.

When a Texas judge initially blocked the executive actions in February, congressional Republicans were also waging their own campaign against Obama’s plan on Capitol Hill.

They tied his executive actions to a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security. The GOP, however, gave up on the fight just hours before a possible partial government shutdown.

Tags Barack Obama